Institutions
Libraries, and archives and museums, are social organizations, entangled in multiple histories, politics and value systems.
Calgary Central Library: combining intimacy and civic statement
The Calgary central library was on first impression the finest public building I have been in for years.
Memory institutions redux: pluralizing memories and a stay against forgetting
We are now used to memory institutions as a way of collectively referring to libraries, archives and museums.
University Futures are shaping Library Futures
Libraries are not ends in themselves, but serve the interests of the organizations of which they are a part. As university emphasis varies around research, education and career poles, we can expect to see libraries evolve to support those emphases more strongly.
Three challenges: Engaging, rightscaling and innovating
A framework of engagement, innovation and rightscaling is used to talk about some of the ways in which the library is changing. This is based on a model developed by John Hagel and John Seely Brown.
Defining the library ... reflexively
Library definitions often emphasize access to or management of information. However, the library has a much stronger generative role in the cycle of knowledge creation.
The enterprising librarian ...
The entrepreneur I participated in an interesting event at the School of Information and Library Science at UNC a while ago. It was a symposium to consider the ‘information professional’ of 2050. Yes, that is 2050 🙂 There was a mix of people. Some in LIS education; some in
Collections are library assets
Business school writing I quite like using the word ‘assets’ with reference to library collections. We tend to think of assets in positive terms, as things that are valuable. More of that later. I was interested to see Rick Anderson remark on the vocabulary used by my colleague
Gamification: services and libraries
I have been interested to see more notes in my tweetstream about peoples’ exercise or diet regimes. They are typically generated by network services as a by-product of some activity, running or cycling, for example, and are part of a motivating framework. The Withings bathroom scale is connected to
